The 30th annual original Harley Party brought in a huge crowd Saturday evening, July 26 at the Amarillo National Center at the Tri-State Fairgrounds. More than 23 food vendors participated, along with drinks and product vendors, giving away swag and cards — Texas Roadhouse, Bubba’s, Fave’s, Abuelos, Walk Ons, Bundt Cakes and more.
Hungry Harley fans chowed down on barbecue, shrimp and grits, grilled jalapenos, and pizza, along with some fresh fruit and desserts while listening (and dancing) to the music of Touching VooDoo and Jenn Williams & the Potty Mouths, while the reverse drawing proceeded for the Harley-Davidson Low Rider S in brilliant red or a $15,000 cash prize. The winner, Diane Higgs, opted for the $15,000 to use for her daughter’s education.
A new feature at the Harley Party was the advent of pinup girls. Several women dressed up in the ‘40s era style and sold tickets to a drawing for $1,000. There was also a contest for the Pinup Girl who sold the most tickets and then another prize for the Favorite Pinup Girl, determined by participants could send their votes online to be counted.
One of the members of the crowd, Camron Ramierez, traveled from San Antonio to see friends, family and enjoy the party and hopefully win the Harley-Davidson Low Rider S in Brilliant Red. “It seems like twice the people this year,” he said. “Last year, my number was already out by the time I came in but this year, it’s still there.”
About 2,000 people turned out for the annual benefit and bike raffle, according to organizers.
The real reason behind the Harley Party
Brandi Reed, CEO of Family Support Services (FSS), said the event is the organization’s biggest annual fundraiser and helps them reach of 25,000 people in 26 counties of the Texas Panhandle who are in need of their services. She said that the largest core of the people helped are in Amarillo and Canyon — and the numbers keep growing.
According to Reed, “We serve about 25,000 people a year. Most of the Texas Panhandle, throughout those outer lying counties outside of Amarillo and Canyon, we serve through our virtual telehealth services. A lot of our survivors that live in smaller towns don’t want to go to the shelter in their small towns,” she said. “So they come to our shelter. We have a really good relationship with the entire region and all our cohorts.”
“Our domestic violence rates have increased tremendously over the last five years per capita. We’re number one in domestic abuse in the state of Texas,” she said. “We have more lethalities per capital than anywhere else in Texas. Our rates of domestic violence have skyrocketed, and to be honest, a lot of that happened during the pandemic. People had the stress of losing their jobs, of illness for a significant time, and when they were financially going through a really hard time living through a crisis, substance abuse rates increased.”
“Sexual assaults increased tremendously, because we had children at home with their perpetrator and no mandatory recorders that were able to identify red flag behavior for abuse,” Reed added. “So, you have to think a year and a half or two years later when those outcries were actually made and they had been suffering in silence.”
As a result, Reed said their services with the the FSS prevention team have been growing: “Just when we felt like we had taken 10 steps forward, the pandemic made us take 10 steps backward. And that’s the story for a lot of nonprofits.”
Reed explained that FSS in 2020 had a fire that destroyed the entire building of their downtown location. “We had to move over to I-40 and Coulter at the AISD location. We were blessed to have their support because we could not have a capital campaign, because it was during the pandemic.”
“Some people say that FSS rose from the ashes. When we got to that location, we thought we would buy our new building on 7th Street and move into it within a year. But no, because of supply and demand issues, that kept all our HVAC system and other materials we needed that we had to wait on two and a half years,” she said. “Then inflation hit, and the quote we got for construction quadrupled. So, we’re fundraising backwards. That’s why this is so important to us, because we want the people (who come out to the Harley Party) to be part of the next 20 years of FSS.” Reed that FSS had served the community for 117 years, and they are planning for the next 117.
This article originally appeared on Amarillo Globe-News: 30th Harley Party welcomes 2,000 participants, donors to FSS
Reporting by Nell Williams, Amarillo Globe-News / Amarillo Globe-News
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
